Vipers, KCCA raising bar in local football 

I cannot deny that what Vipers SC and KCCA have done in recent weeks has made me feel a little envious as an SC Villa enthusiast.

The two teams are in a race of their own to raise the level of Ugandan football by acquiring players and coaches from Portugal and Brazil. Since both countries’ national language is Portuguese, I will simply call them Brazilians.

I’m saying this with a pinch of salt because I don’t know much about these Brazilians and their level of skill. Brazil may be the home of natural football talent, but that is not a guarantee that they will succeed in the Uganda Premier League.

However, the mere mention of their nationalities is bound to arouse a great deal of interest in our game. The reason I believe they will raise the level of our football stems from the lack of professionalism shown by many of our so-called local stars.

It takes just a couple of good games for our local players to gain ‘celebrity’ status, and when they become assured of being starters on teams as a result of their ‘big names,’ many have become complacent, aloof and content as though they have reached the pinnacle of football.

This is the very reason most of them fail to make it in highly professional leagues abroad. So, whereas there is no guarantee that the Brazilians will light up the UPL, there is a positive intention that could turn out to be a game changer in Ugandan football.

The English football, for example, had for years failed to have an impact on world football since their 1966 World Cup triumph until the creation of the English Premier League in 1992.

This opened doors to an influx of top-level foreign players and in the years that followed, we witnessed the establishment of the best league in the world.

This went a long way towards positively impacting the England national team; so, Uganda’s football landscape can witness a similar transformation.

Players from a totally different setting can help raise the standards of the locals in terms of professionalism. Back in the early 2000s, when I won a contract to install fibre optic cables from Lusaka to Kapirimposhi in Zambia, locals there used to wonder why my company would work day and night without pausing.

What they did not realize is that, as foreigners, we did not have any distractions like family or friends. There was no time for burials or wedding meetings. It was all about work.

That is the same mindset that the Brazilians bring to the UPL and in turn, this raises their level of focus on the game, and their output will be high if they don’t get distracted by Kampala’s entertainment life.

That is the way modern football is supposed to operate, not this business of having a football prospect at 21 years old when he already has a family to feed. On the flipside, it has been argued that the influx of better foreign players may weaken the national team on account of the limited playing time of the locals, but history has proven this is not true.

There is the option of naturalising these foreign players and there is no shame in that because all the top nations do it. Many people may not know that many of Uganda’s greatest players such as Phillip Omondi, Patrick Nathan and Timothy Ayiekoh, among others, were naturalised.

Who cares if we end up naturalising these players the way France, England or Belgium do? The key issue here is raising the level of our domestic football; other issues are just secondary.

Amidst all this initiative by Vipers and KCCA, their efforts may be seen as a threat by Fufa to create a new power centre. Fufa hates anyone who steals their thunder and may fight the influx of foreign players in the league through restrictions.

In fact, this can be a blessing in disguise to wake up the contented local players, and just as we have learned from top European football powers, assimilating the foreign players into the national team set-up could actually improve the national team set-up.

The author is SC Villa president emeritus